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The no-name cancer.

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The no-name cancer

Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma may not have much name recognition, but it's common and * the good news * often treatable, if not curable.

Unlike the cancers that affect the breast, lung, or prostate, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma isn't very well known and is even less well understood by the public. That non- prefix may be one reason why: anything named for what it is not is bound to furrow brows.

More confusion awaits anyone first learning about the disease, a group that includes many newly diagnosed patients * and their loved ones * attempting an Internet-aided scramble up a steep learning curve. Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma comes in more than two dozen different types. Treatment and prognosis vary greatly by type. The names alone are daunting: diffuse large B cell lymphoma, splenic marginal zone lymphoma, lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma.

All this complexity sometimes obscures that non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is one of the more common cancers. In 2008, more Americans were diagnosed with it (roughly 66,000) than with melanoma (about 62,000) or pancreatic cancer (38,000), according to American Cancer Society estimates.

There's plenty of good news, though. If non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is mind-boggling, that's partly a reflection of how much better doctors understand the immune system * and the cancers that arise from it * than they did in the 1960s or 1970s. It's as if they've gone from using a blurry, black-and-white TV for diagnosis and treatment...